Friday, June 6, 2008

I have three previous, rather lengthy entries on the visual filters and text markup tools in Logos and BibleWorks7, especially on morphological markups. (HERE for BW7 and HERE for BW7 and Logos and HERE for Logos) A few new items have shown up lately that can be added to the discussion.

BibleWorks7: On the BW7 forum, Ewan MacLeod provided a helpful color file for highlighting otherwise all-to-easy-to-miss footnotes to the Westminster BHS (the WTT and WTM texts). This is a nice implementation of what one can do with text coloring. It is great to be able to share such files (posted in the forum). Be sure to follow his directions given in the third post. Additionally, there are a couple more color files on the unofficial BibleWorks blog including one that offers a words of Christ in red.

Logos: Phil Gons has a good blog post indicating how you can use the visual filters as a way of searching or scanning a text for certain features. He links to a number of blog entries and videos that describe other visual filters that come with Logos. One that is easily overlooked (okay, I just discovered in my Logos...) is the Eissfeldt visual filter showing his analysis of the JEDP sources for the Hexateuch. (Yes, I know this is a controversial issue, and some will argue with his choices and some will argue about its value at all, but it is an important way for scholars to look at and understand the text.) You do need to use the Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Hebrew Bible text (AFHEB10) which also includes a genre analysis that can be turned on/off. For the source coloring, J is in red, E is in light blue, P is in purple, D is in green, and editorial additions in dark blue. (Cf. the graphic below.)There is room for lot more works like this. As mainly a NT person, the first thing that comes to my mind is the synoptic parallel coloring I do. Yes, part of the learning is in the drawing, but I'm thinking there are a lot of times when I don't have the time. As I noted in an earlier post, the biggest drawback to the implementation of the markups in Logos is that they do not work in the Parallel Passages and Harmonies. (I suppose one could have three separate windows, but they wouldn't be linked.) In BibleWorks7, one could have the markups active in their Synopsis window to make easy comparison between the Gospels. It would be a bunch of work, but I'm sure that if anyone created such a file, I'm sure that Jim and Michael would be glad to host them at the BibleWorks blog.